Mike Geffner Presents The Inspired Word: Mike Geffner Presents The Inspired Word March 26

The Inspired Word
"Remember the Name"
Date: Friday, March 26, 2010
Time: 7-10pm
Location: (Le) Poisson Rouge
http://lepoissonrouge.com/
158 Bleecker Street, New York, NY 10012
Phone: (212) 505-FISH (3474)
Cover Charge: $10

In (Le) Poisson Rouge, the hottest club in downtown Manhattan, The Inspired Word presents an equally sizzling lineup of Rachel McKibbens, Adam Falkner, John Murillo, Diana Arnold, and Joyce Lee.

Please join us for an awesome night of passionate words.

MUST BE 21 YEARS OF AGE OR OLDER TO ENTER! PLEASE MAKE SURE TO BRING ID!

Rachel McKibbens is the current Women of the World poetry slam champion, is an eight-time National Poetry Slam team member, a three-time NPS finalist, and a 2007 New York Foundation for the Arts poetry fellow and Pushcart nominee. Her first book of poetry, Pink Elephant (Cypher Books) was released in December. She lives in upstate New York.

Adam Falkner is a multiple-time member and coach of national poetry slam teams representing the youth community of Ann Arbor, The University of Michigan and the legendary Nuyorican Poets Café in New York City, where he was a 2008-2009 Writer-in-Residence. Adam’s work has appeared in anthologies and journals such as Unsquared (826 Publications, 2006), The Barbershop Chronicles (Penmanship Books, 2008), decomP Magazine, The Other Journal, The Esu Review, The Lamplighter Review and others. He has also has been featured on HBO, BET, Michigan and New York Public Radio and in Time Out New York, and he's a National Associate for the Prison Creative Arts Project (PCAP), a Ginsberg scholar and a past recipient of the Martin Luther King Jr. Spirit Award in higher education for his pioneering work at the University of Michigan in the area of Whiteness studies. He currently teachers 11th and 12th grade English/Creative Writing in Bushwick, Brooklyn.

John Murillo is the current Jay C. and Ruth Halls Poetry Fellow at the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing. A graduate of New York University's MFA program in creative writing, he has also received fellowships from the New York Times, Cave Canem, and the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Massachussetts. He is a two-time Larry Neal Writers' Award winner and the inaugural Elma P. Stuckey Visiting Emerging Poet-in-Residence at Columbia College Chicago. His poetry has appeared in such publications as Callaloo, Court Green, Ploughshares, Ninth Letter, and the anthology Writing Self and Community: African-American Poetry After the Civil Rights Movement. Up Jump the Boogie is his first collection.

Diana Arnold is a New York City solo performer with training from both NYU and the New School. She has written and produced for major television networks and after touring with Birthright Israel Monologues last year she's working on a full length one woman show. She loves New York City even when its hardest on her, feels most safe when in front of a room of strangers, and is convinced there is a ghost in her house (which she likes to think its her father).

At first sight, Joyce Lee is fearless to the point of intimidation. She admits “[her] writing is either making feather-light of heavy situations, or exposing the weight in them by adding a touch more of ‘heavy’.” Joyce Lee is the 2009 Grand Slam Champion of Team Oakland in Oakland, Ca and opened for her team all the way up to the semi-finals stage at 2009 Nationals. Joyce was also a participant in the 2009 Individual World Poetry Slam and ranked 15th in the nation after being exposed to Slam only two years ago. Joyce has a B.A. in English with a writing concentration and a minor in Theology from Jamestown University (a private Christian college in North, Dakota). She has a ‘pull-no-punches-tell-it-all-like-it-is' personality on stage and off it is unabashed about sharing any part of herself with her audience. She is sure to give you a perspective and a performance you won't soon forget.